He looked into his vegetable basket. In an earthenware dish, under a domed lid, lay a slab of crumbly white cheese, beyaz peynir.
He skinned two onions and chopped them roughly, then sprinkled them with salt. He sliced the tops off two tomatoes and chopped them, with peppers, garlic, and a bunch of wilted parsley. He mashed the cheese with a fork.
He split the stale loaf lengthways and rubbed the insides with a cut tomato and a garlic clove. He drizzled them with oil and set them at an angle over the heat.
He dipped the onions into a bowl of water to remove the salt, and tossed them into a bowl along with the peppers, the tomatoes, and the parsley. A drop of oil fell onto the coals with a hiss. He sprinkled the salad with the crumbled cheese and a big pinch of kirmizi biber, which he had bought after the desecration of the apartment—usually he made it himself, with a big bunch of dried chili peppers crushed in a mortar, rubbed with oil and roasted black in a heavy pan on the coals.
He poured a generous lick of olive oil over the salad, added salt, and pounded peppercorns in the mortar. Clink-clink-clink.
He stirred the salad with a spoon.
He took the toasted bread from the fire and set it on a plate. He washed his hands and mouth.
He ate cross-legged on the sofa, the sun on his left hand, thinking about the dark burrows under the city, the huge cistern like a temple, and the wavering light that had pursued him through his dreams. The light he’d seen in Amélie’s eyes.
I am doing this for Max, she’d said. Fulfilling his desires. Following his instructions as if he were still alive; as if, like Byzantium itself, he still had the power to direct and to control the actions of people in the living world.
Yashim spooned up some of the vegetables with a chunk of toasted bread. I am doing this for Max.
For Max: for the man whose grossly mutilated corpse both he and Dr. Millingen had examined days ago. A body without a face, but good teeth.
121
“IT’S you.” Dr. Millingen leaned forward and turned up the wick; a warm, soft light spilled across the room.
Yashim placed a bag on the floor beside him. “Madame Lefèvre?”
“Very weak, after her ordeal. But she is a fighter, Yashim efendi. I am sure you know that.”
He leaned forward and picked up a coin that lay dully on the leather desktop.
“A survivor? Yes. Like her husband. Your old friend Meyer.”
Dr. Millingen frowned and glanced at the door. “I have already arranged for Madame Lefèvre to be repatriated,” he said, holding the coin to the light. “She leaves tomorrow, for France.”
“A French ship?”
“L’Ulysse. She’s berthed at Tophane, on the quay.” He leaned back, bringing the coin with him. “My man will be seeing her aboard. No more accidents, Yashim efendi.”
Yashim said coldly: “Accidents? But it wasn’t my idea to send her into the cisterns, Dr. Millingen.”
The coin began to run through Dr. Millingen’s fingers.
“I suppose you know she found nothing,” Yashim said.
“So she told me.”
Yashim stepped forward and spread his hands. “The clues added up. You would have had your relics, had they been there. But they weren’t. I don’t believe they exist,” he added, shaking his head. “Lefèvre was a salesman.”
Dr. Millingen considered Yashim thoughtfully.
“I agree with you,” he said at last. “And yet, as you say, the clues added up.”
“The trouble with clues—you can make them point wherever you like. A few old legends, a rare book—Lefèvre only had to choose a theme, et voilà! A story he knew how to sell.”
Millingen frowned. “But I told you—he got nothing from us until the relics were found.”
Yashim smiled. “On the contrary. From you he got everything he needed. Authenticity, Dr. Millingen. I believe it is called provenance. Your interest alone raised the price—for others.”
“But Madame Lefèvre—she believed the story, too.”
“Did she?” Yashim thought of Amélie in the lamplight, sinking to her knees in the dark water. “I think, Dr. Millingen, that the only person who may have believed in the whole charade was you. It was you who once told me that a collector is a weak man. Do you remember? You with that coin of Malakian’s I brought—the missing coin in your collection—eager to own it, at almost any price. Maybe you couldn’t be sure of Lefèvre. Why should you trust him? But in the back of your mind you hoped he might be right.”
The doctor pursed his lips, making no effort to deny it.
“So you persuaded Madame Lefèvre to pick up the trail.” Yashim clasped his hands together across his chest. “I don’t know if that meant you were weak. But it made you unscrupulous.”
“Steady on,” Millingen growled.
“You could have offered her money for the relics. She needs money, I’m sure.” Yashim remembered Amélie in the water, wading from him, turning her lovely head to say that she was doing this for Max. For a dead man. “But I think you offered her something else. Something that mattered more to her even than money.”
The fingers turning the coin fell still. “I wonder what you’re going to tell me, Yashim efendi. I’m very interested to know.”
“I don’t think Amélie ever really believed in the relics herself. And I don’t think you did, either. But you wanted to be sure, Dr. Millingen, didn’t you? So you devised a trade, risking one life for another. That’s your business, isn’t it? Life.”
Millingen didn’t move. Yashim cocked his head and said: “You promised her Maximilien Lefèvre.”
122
MILLINGEN placed the coin on the desk with a loud click.
Their eyes met.
“Lefèvre is dead,” Millingen said. He was watching Yashim now, trying to gauge the effect of his words.
Yashim nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Lefèvre, dead.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Dr. Millingen.” Yashim frowned impatiently. “It’s a question of identity, that’s all. He told me that himself.”
“He told you—what?” Millingen’s tone was scornful.
“Byzantium. Constantinople. Istanbul. They’re all real names. All real places. Lefèvre was fascinated by them, too: three identities, woven into one—just like the snakes in the column, on the Hippodrome. They are all the same place, of course. Just as Meyer and Lefèvre are the same man.”
Millingen made a gesture of impatience. “I don’t go in for metaphysics, efendi. I’m a doctor—and I know a dead man when I see one, too.”
“That body, in the embassy,” Yashim said mildly, “was certainly dead. It just wasn’t who we thought. It wasn’t Lefèvre at all.” He cocked his head. “Who was it, Dr. Millingen? I’m very curious. Was it a corpse you procured for the occasion? Or just a hapless bag-carrier, in the wrong place, at the wrong time?”
Millingen began to tap his finger on the coin.
“Well, it’s not the most important thing now,” Yashim said peaceably. “You were happy to let the world believe that Lefèvre was dead.” He looked up and smiled. “You thought the Mavrogordatos would be satisfied, I suppose. Is that what he hoped, too?”
Millingen bent his head and frowned at a corner of his desk, but he did not open his mouth.
“But he couldn’t count on your help, could he? Not after Missilonghi. So he did the trade: his life for the relics. The last, lost treasure of Byzantium, spirited away by a priest at the altar as the Ottomans invaded the Great Church. A chalice and plate—if they still existed. And the collector in you couldn’t turn him down.”
Dr. Millingen leaned his elbow on the desk and shaded his eyes.